


Howl

by earth_dragon



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 9.23, 9.23 Coda, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Mark of Cain, Spoilers for 9.23
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 05:11:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1845529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earth_dragon/pseuds/earth_dragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every king needed a knight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Howl

**Author's Note:**

> I had the idea for this kicking around for a while. I think the real reason Crowley never told Dean the full truth about what would happen to him with the MoC is because he wanted a companion. He wants Dean for himself, even if he’s not quite able or ready to admit it. This is a little bitty story about that.

_Feelings._

 

The very word sat bitter and rotting on his tongue. Oh, how he hated feelings! He hated the way they roiled up through his veins and bubbled under his skin; like an itch that traveled and he couldn’t satisfy no matter how hard he scratched.

 

It had been so long since he had dealt with feelings and he was out of practice with them. Even as a human, he had never been one to closely examine matters of the heart. But as a demon? Forget it. The only feeling he should crave as a demon was the satisfaction of crushing souls in his fist as they begged for mercy.

 

Feelings made you weak. They were a chink in your armour. And he knew well enough the damage that leaving yourself exposed could lead to. A king may want, but he should never need anyone. And he was a king.

 

As a human, Crowley had never attended to his son’s feelings. Hell, he had never even attended to most of his son’s basic needs. He knew he had not been a good father. He had never known how to take care of himself, let alone care for someone else. Really, it had been a blessing when that ship went down and Gavin with it because what kind of life was the boy ever going to have?

What kind of life could he have ever provided for him? All he knew was weakness and pain, and that was all he knew to pass on.

 

It wasn’t much in the way of a legacy.

 

He had been nothing but a pauper back then: lonely, hard, scrabbling, classless. He’d had nothing to offer a son. The world would have just as soon kicked him in the head and left him to die in the gutter if he hadn’t known a trick or two.

 

Why should he worry about anyone but himself?

 

Gavin sank with his ship but at least he caught a ship in the first place. Dean never even made it to the dock. And if Crowley thought he was a bad father, he shudders to think what John Winchester was.

 

Feelings were what ruined Dean; they were his downfall.

 

Dean cared so much for his brother that he wouldn’t let him die; and then he cared so much about making his brother forgive him that he took on the Mark of Cain in a desperate bid to set things right. In all of this, not once, did Dean care about himself other than to abate his own loneliness.

 

Dean got himself killed, and all for such terrible, useless human feelings. His armour was so chinked that he might as well have not been wearing any.

But maybe… maybe Dean wasn’t so ruined as all that. After all, if Crowley could rise from the garbage-lined gutters of ancient Scotland, then perhaps Dean could rise from this.

 

“And I began to let myself believe, maybe miracles do come true.”

 

Crowley gripped the arm of the chair. Sam was summoning him, desperately. Of course, yes, now he wanted Dean back again with all his flaws, and love, and humanity. How anyone could ever want that Crowley didn’t know, but he did not have to deliver.

 

“Listen to me Dean Winchester, what you're feeling right now is not death, it's life.”

 

Crowley had never been more alive than after he had become a demon, free from pain and remorse, free from responsibility.

 

He was tainted again now with just a touch of human blood and he felt, yes, he felt tiny stirrings of emotion. He hated them. They tried to fill up the empty place where his soul used to be, to cling onto the son that was long gone from him. He could not need. He could not allow himself to need.

 

But he could want.

 

“A new kind of life.”

 

He could want a companion.

 

“Open your eyes Dean, see what I see, feel what I feel.”

 

Dean would hold just enough humanity that he would hate the fact that he felt anything at all, and he would rally against it. He would be passionate and angry, and vengeful. He would be beautiful and violent. Crowley could behold him and be happy.

 

Every king needed a knight.

  
“Let's go take a howl at that moon.”


End file.
